Fade to green
by Marveilla Xi
Summary: What if Tauriel dies and Kili survives the Battle of the Five Armies? That scene from the end of TBOTFA, reversed. You know, the one we all cried our eyes out on. Yes, that one.


A little something I scribbled on an evening I was especially furious with TBOTFA ending as it did for Kiliel. Blame goes to, but not entirely, those amazing fans who put together those heart-wrenching songs with Kiliel scenes on YouTube. Well done, people, my heart is all wrenched out.

The taste for drama and feeling devastated over imaginary hopeless lovers is, of course, my fault entirely.

Fade to green

The sound of the battle drowned slowly all around him, as time slowed and he felt himself pushing against it, as if the air around him had become solid, dense liquid and he could not move through it.

As if in slow motion he had heard that battle cry, in a language he did not understand but sounded so sweet in his ears because it was her lips that had let it fly, and he saw her leaping at the great beast holding him up, seconds before the axe came down upon him. He was suddenly free, and he fell to the ground, and the impact made all his living wounds scream at him, but it was only her cry he heard. For she had succeeded in diverting the monster's attention from him long enough to become the center of it. He saw the axe swing, and in slow motion her daggers gleamed in the light as they came on both sides of the creature's neck, slicing him to the bone.

But not before the axe came down with a thud. Not before red hair was splattered with what, for the first time, seemed brighter than itself– her own life's blood.

Kili screamed, but no sound left his mouth. The same silence that had drowned the noises all around him seemed to have descended upon himself. He tried to get up, and only managed to crawl forward, on his hands and knees, to where the monster had fallen. To where, a step away, she had landed.

Tauriel's hair was wild around her face, soaked in the blood that gushed from the great cut across her chest. Suddenly he could move again, as time and space loomed on once more, and in a moment he wished with all his being that it might slow down again, or stop altogether, just so he could stretch this moment in time and somehow delay what was to come.

For even a fool in love could see that she was beyond saving now.

Forgetting his own wounds, Kili gently took her in his arms, as careful as if he was handling a rare piece of mountain crystal that might break if he so much as touched it. Not as if he was holding a body that was already broken beyond any hope.

He murmured sweet nonsense in his own tongue, muttering, "You will be alright, everything's going to be alright, just stay with me, Tauriel, stay with me…"

Her eyes opened, with the greatest effort, and widened a little at the sight of him, and then the green emeralds that he'd always, in his mind's eye, compared her eyes to, lost their light forever. Her hand hung limp in his grasp.

Kili kept looking at her in a state of shock. Then he carefully let her lie down, and, protectively, put an arm over her body, very mindful to not touch the wound on her chest, even though this did not matter anymore. His other hand, fingers grimy and bloodstained, touched her face, and of their own went to her eyes, those green jewels, and his fingers slid over her eyelids, closing them. Then, leaning over her, he placed a kiss as soft as a whisper over her lips, her still warm lips, so warm that for a second he felt as though she was returning his kiss.

A kiss he was never able to give to her alive. At the time so many obstacles had divided them, obstacles that had seemed insurmountable. Now all this seemed so laughable, so obscene, for he came to realize the only insurmountable obstacle there ever was, was death itself.

This is how they found him, his head gently resting on her chest, his arms around her, and for once, it did not matter who saw. For in the lifetime without her that awaited for him, he would forever wonder, why did anything else ever matter?


End file.
